In many countries, for example in the Russian Federation, an almost closed national economic area continues to exist. Since all imported goods are subject to customs procedures the resulting delivery times for spare parts which have to be obtained from outside the country are long. As a result of the high average age of the production facilities in Russian industry the demand for spare parts is relatively high.
Providing and procuring spare parts is however problematic for a number of reasons. Many businesses are badly informed about their own stocks of spare parts so that greater quantities of spare parts than are actually needed to meet demand are stocked. In many large concerns the high administrative outlay of the ordering processes leads to excessive quantities being ordered. The disadvantage here is that capital is bound in by unnecessarily high stocks of spare parts. There are however also businesses which are forced as part of money saving measures to stock smaller amounts of spare parts. In this case the problem can occur of a missing spare part leading to a machine or system shutdown which results in losses caused by production downtimes.